Profile

Wesley Lynch is a serial technology entrepreneur. He is the CEO and Founder of Realmdigital, a leading South African e-business strategy and technology partner, specialising in Web, Social and Mobile platforms as well as the CEO of Snapplify, an innovative digital publishing solutions provider. Contact details: website www.snapplify.comwww.realmdigital.co.za | Twitter @WesleyLynch

Wesley Lynch is a serial technology entrepreneur. He is the CEO and Founder of Realmdigital, a leading South African e-business strategy and technology partner, specialising in Web, Social and Mobile platforms as well as the CEO of Snapplify, an innovative digital publishing solutions provider.

He is passionate about technology, new evolving technology for businesses and providing innovative solutions for the African market. In 2011 Wesley was named as one of the "38 emerging South African tech entrepreneurs to watch" in the Old Mutual Entrepreneurs guide as well as Top 10 IT Personality from the Computer Society of South Africa.

Even though the story of e-books, for the most part, is the story of Amazon's Kindle - which overcame the increasingly high cost of print book production and distribution by digitising the value chain - it is not, for various reasons, the answer in an academic context.

According to a 2012 report by technology research company, World Wide Worx, e-commerce growth is accelerating in South Africa. The study predicts that the Internet economy will increase its contribution to the overall economy from 2% in 2011 (R59-billion), to as much as 2.5% by 2016.

African software has had some qualified global successes, but more often than not our home-grown innovations don't 'take' well in other territories. To overcome this, we need to think wider. While African solutions are often preferred in dealing with African problems, our software developers must also identify global applications for their solutions, if they are to have global success.

The most recent ABC figures have painted a picture of decline for newspapers, including a 6.7% drop in circulation figures for dailies and 4,9% for weekend papers. Although magazines are holding strong, they are becoming luxury items, able to compete because they are by nature more niched than newspapers.